It is this hectic summer before the two towers collapsed.
The slogan for the new millennium is “Tempo, Tempo, Tempo!”, And my job as a process consultant for a German logistics company is to get an “ineffective” software test department “up to scratch”.
Nobody speaks it, but the Damocles sword of rationalization, in favor of a standardized software solution that promises to make some personnel positions redundant, does not only hang over this department.
Fresh off the press from systemic training, I approach this task - in a firm effort to help expose the hidden mechanisms of operational interaction to improve the test process, so that the worst may still be averted.
On the fencing ground
We
Without rules
For the first meeting I enter the room full of zest for action. The eight members of the test group sit at the U-shaped tables.
"As you already saw from the invitation ..." I start. An older, at first glance inconspicuous man rises from a table by the window. As it turns out later, it is the group leader.
"Hello ..." he says, holding out my hand, "... there must be so much time."
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1 “Keigo”, the Japanese polite language, is a rather complex network of rules for Europeans, how to respectfully approach other people according to Japanese etiquette and in what context.
2 In contrast to content-based advice, where experts provide their external assessments and solutions, systemic advice ensures that those who are advised both determine the causes of their bottlenecks themselves and find their own solutions - whereby this approach is intended to further strengthen the system .
